Software advice?

[ChrisPlatt]

I am primarily a film photographer. My favorite aspect of the hobby is printing in the wet darkroom.
I am now planning to add light digital post-processing to my bag of tricks, er, skill set.

Along with my Windows 7 laptop I own older film and flatbed scanners, plus a couple 15 and 20-year old digital cameras.
Of course I will require older software versions compatible with my ancient but still serviceable hardware.

I am not interested in upgrading to a newer OS and newer hardware.
I am not interested in newer subscription-based software versions.

As film continues to be my preference I expect I will be working mostly with scanned BW negatives.

For my application which Adobe product(s) should I be looking at: Photoshop, Elements or Lightroom?

TIA,
Chris

 

[Bill Blackwell]

... For my application which Adobe product(s) should I be looking at: Photoshop, Elements or Lightroom? ...

Choose your poison. Either would work sufficiently to suit your needs, but although they're both Adobe products, they are very different as to their operation and commands (they are two completely different programs). I currently use Photoshop - full version - and have used PS Elements in the past, but that's what I'm used to. Others use Lightroom and swear by it.

One isn't any "better" than the other.

 

[Mackinaw]

I use Photoshop Elements. The 2025 version is quite sophisticated and does a lot. I'm quite happy with it.

Jim B.

 

[Leon C]

Plus probably a copy of Vuescan might help.

Supported Scanners

 

[Timmyjoe]

Depending on your scanner hardware. If you have an old Nikonscan scanner, the Nikon Scan software is rather critical for scanning B&W. Not for the actual scanning, but for calibrating the scanner at the beginning of each scan session. I find Vuescan works well for the actual scanning of B&W negatives, but in the past, when I've not calibrated the scanner first, sometime it will go super high contrast or go solarization in the middle of a scan session.

If you're running an old laptop, Nikon Scan should work, as it was last updated in like 2009.

Best,
-Tim

 

[ChrisPlatt]

Though I worked on and with computers most of my life I don't find them that interesting or fun to use.
I am not necessarily interested in the most powerful software tools; quick and easy to use sounds good...

Chris

 

[Godfrey]

Computers are simply tools to get stuff done with. I neither like nor dislike them.
When an application is well designed and works well, it make getting stuff done more enjoyable.

I've used mostly Apple macOS equipment since 1984 for my photographic efforts, so I don't know specifically what works on a Windows 7 system. That said:

- Given that I try to do most of my necessary exposure and framing in camera at the time of making exposures, I find Lightroom works very well for me as it makes the simple image processing I usually need to do very easy, does a good job of printing or assembling slide shows (when I want to do that), and otherwise allows most of the image annotation and management I want, also easily. LR has been my primary image processing app since 2004. I'm sure some perpetual license version of LR is available for Windows 7...

- I've used Vuescan to drive all the scanners I've owned since the 1990s. I'm sure some version of it runs on Windows 7 as well.

Good luck finding what you want.

G

 

[JeffS7444]

I don't know about PSE, but PS and LR (now known as Lightroom Classic) are two rather different products, though there is some overlap in their capabilities. LR is primarily an asset manager, and as a way of managing a photo library, it beats the heck out of manually managing a bunch of folders or drives. Over the years, it's post-processing capabilities have grown to the extent that it's adequate for 98% of what I do.

IIRC, the commercial LR alternatives include DxO PhotoLab and Capture One Pro, and the open-source Darktable. I periodically sample them all just to make sure I'm not missing out on anything major. And the obvious PS alternative is the open-source GIMP.

Should be easy enough to find W7-compatible installers for Darktable and GIMP, but the others may require a scavenger hunt, and cross your fingers that the old license keys are still valid.

 

[Jonathan R]

GIMP is free!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Photoshop in my experience works better than Lightroom for editing scans of film. LR is tailored for converting raw files from digital cameras, which need less post processing than film scans.

 

[Godfrey]

Photoshop in my experience works better than Lightroom for editing scans of film. LR is tailored for converting raw files from digital cameras, which need less post processing than film scans.

That's an interesting opinion ... I've done virtually 100% of my scanned film rendering with Lightroom since I didn't really start scanning film until well after I had put Photoshop on the back burner and adopted Lightroom as my primary image processing tool. 😉

G

 

[Disappointed_Horse]

I seem to be becoming one of those annoying free and open source software advocates since I installed Linux on my old MacBook Air a couple of years ago, but please let me offer a few points here:

First, if you don't want to buy new hardware, Linux gives you the option to install an up-to-date (and therefore much more secure) operating system on your old hardware. I'm running elementary os (not the most lightweight distribution) on a computer from 2014 with only 4GB of RAM, and it runs reasonably well. Not lightning fast, but fast enough that it's still pleasant to use.

Second, if you're not interested in subscription-based software, I think your best route is free/open source software. I think basically all commercial/propriety software is moving towards subscription models.

I use ART (a fork of RawTherapee), Filmulator, GIMP (rarely), and a few other FOSS apps for editing on my Linux box. I have not tried scanning or printing with this machine, so I can't really comment on that, although I understand there is FOSS available that does this well.

Here's a site with a lot of useful information about FOSS photography software: PIXLS.US - Free/Open Source Photography.

Just a few points to consider. And please forgive me for being one of those people.

 

[Axel]

I'm running elementary os (not the most lightweight distribution) on a computer from 2014 with only 4GB of RAM, and it runs reasonably well. Not lightning fast, but fast enough that it's still pleasant to use.

It were my first tip, too to replace the old and unsupported windows with a small and fast linux package.
Recently I fitted out my old Yoga 380 with Linux Mint and it runs near lightning fast. A GIMP package is available for all platforms.
Scanners, especially older ones, are supported very well wit the sane package and various graphical frontends.

I am using Linux for around 35 years now. A very rewarding investment of some time to get used to this OS (I know and Windows and MacOS very well).
Try it. You wom't regret

 

[Ernst Dinkla]

With Linux Vuescan will also work. However if there is a plan to add digital printing next to the darkroom printing then Qimage Ultimate is no option on a Linux distribution. Wine might allow it but it will make the workflow complex. QTR for B&W printing used to run on Linux but without a proper GUI it is no fun either.

 

[Leon C]

Though I worked on and with computers most of my life I don't find them that interesting or fun to use.
I am not necessarily interested in the most powerful software tools; quick and easy to use sounds good...

Chris

IMHO your quick and easy option would be:

SW for your Scanner of choice.
Vuescan
Copy of perpetual license PSE [The newer versions only last 3 yrs!]

And depending on your workflow maybe one of these for converting, some are free, although not all will work with PSE if you choose that but some are standalone so you'll have to do little homework also the learning curve is different for each one and some may not work with your HW/SW set up, although Windows is more forgiving!

NegativeLabPro
ColorPerfect [Does work with PSE]
DarkTable
RawTherapee
SilkyPix
FilmLab
Grain2Pixel
NegMaster
Negfix8
Negative2positive

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

I do my B&W scans with a DSLR and macro lens and used to use Lightroom to process them with good results. (When I had a proper scanner I used Vuescan.) Bailed on both my Macbook and Windows gaming PC last year, switched to Ubuntu, and have been bouncing between RawTherapee and Darktable. Both work pretty well; Darktable has a dedicated negative conversion module called Negadoctor. I'm probably sticking with Darktable, which is to my taste less ugly and confusing than RT, though both are powerful. (Side note, online forums about these applications are crawling with people who can't wait to become enraged at your innocent questions about how to do stuff you used to do in Lightroom, so armor up!)

PC games are also working flawlessly on Linux, btw. That world has made amazing strides even in the past year.

 

[peterm1]

I use Photoshop Elements. The 2025 version is quite sophisticated and does a lot. I'm quite happy with it.

Jim B.

I used to use Elements and still would be except when I was travelling on along term basis some years ago, I had a computer crash and lost my copy of Elements on my hard drive. Of course I did not have the installation disks (this was back in the day when software was still distributed on CD/DVDs. But at the time Corel had a one month free trial of Corel Paintshop Pro offering, so I tried that and then bought it as I had no way of getting my installation disks any time soon. But I have stuck with it ever since and found it to be basically quite close to Elements so.......................

But tell me please - I had no idea Elements was still sold and could be tempted to perhaps go back as I always found it met my needs and had some advantages over the Corel equivalent.

But here's the thing.................. is it a one-time payment or monthly subscription, and is it stand-alone (i.e. no obligation to use the cloud)? Either of these would be a deal breaker for me.

 

[ChrisPlatt]

So many answers! Special thanks to the few who read my original post and tried to answer my question.
FWIW I bought sealed copies of the highest compatible releases of Photoshop, Lightroom and Elements.

Chris

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Flatbed...
Epson? If so, their own software is best with their flatbeds. Compared to another two usual suspects, including VueScan mentioned here.

 

[Bolo Kukus]

Late here as usual.

Check out Faststone Image Viewer. I've used it since 2012, without any complaints. Quick and easy, regular updates, and best of all it's free.

Faststone is ideal for the basic and simple post processing I do. Like many here I put my mental energy into making the actual image, and 95% of the 'afterwork' I do consists of a few basics - cropping, fiddling a little with the colors, adjusting the mid-tones. That's about it. Now and then I have to work on a more difficult image, and Faststone copes well with that also.

I use it for the very few images I nowadays submit as stock to book publishers. Their photo editors have never complained about my photos, but they do all the hard work anyway on all the images to be published - probably with Photoshop or Lightroom, ha!

If I had to pay for software, I would go with Elements. I've worked with it in the past and it's good, if somewhat fiddly for me.